Unit-4 Philosophy of Education

Q. 1 Maria Montessori
What is Montessori Education?
Montessori is a method of education named after Dr. Maria Montessori. She was the first
woman in Italy to obtain the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Because she was a doctor, Maria
Montessori looked at education from a scientific level. She believed that education should
prepare a person for all aspects of life. She designed materials and techniques
that would promote a natural growth of learning in students. They are common to all
Montessori classrooms. Working with these materials and techniques forms a pattern that
children carry over naturally to reading, writing, and mathematics. Each skill is developed to
interlock with another.
From The American Montessori Society:
The Montessori Method of education, developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, is a child-centered
educational approach based on scientific observations of children from birth to adulthood. Dr.
Montessori’s Method has been time tested, with over 100 years of success in diverse cultures
throughout the world.
It is a view of the child as one who is naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating
learning in a supportive, thoughtfully prepared learning environment. It is an approach that
values the human spirit and the development of the whole child—physical, social, emotional,
cognitive.
Montessori education offers our children opportunities to develop their potential as they step
out into the world as engaged, competent, responsible, and respectful citizens with an
understanding and appreciation that learning is for life.

 Each child is valued as a unique individual. Montessori education recognizes that

children learn in different ways, and accommodates all learning styles. Students are also
free to learn at their own pace, each advancing through the curriculum as he is ready,
guided by the teacher and an individualized learning plan.
 Beginning at an early age, Montessori students develop order, coordination,
concentration, and independence. Classroom design, materials, and daily routines
support the individual’s emerging “self-regulation” (ability to educate one’s self, and to
think about what one is learning), toddlers through adolescents.
 Students are part of a close, caring community. The multi-age classroom—typically
spanning 3 years—re-creates a family structure. Older students enjoy stature as
mentors and role models; younger children feel supported and gain confidence about
the challenges ahead. Teachers model respect, loving kindness, and a belief in peaceful
conflict resolution.
 Montessori students enjoy freedom within limits. Working within parameters set by
their teachers, students are active participants in deciding what their focus of learning
will be. Montessorians understand that internal satisfaction drives the child’s curiosity
and interest and results in joyous learning that is sustainable over a lifetime.
  Students are supported in becoming active seekers of knowledge. Teachers provide
environments where students have the freedom and the tools to pursue answers to
their own questions.
 Self-correction and self-assessment are an integral part of the Montessori classroom
approach. As they mature, students learn to look critically at their work, and become
adept at recognizing, correcting, and learning from their errors.

Given the freedom and support to question, to probe deeply, and to make connections,
Montessori students become confident, enthusiastic, self-directed learners. They are able to
think critically, work collaboratively, and act boldly—a skill set for the 21st century.
Froebel

Q.2: Froebel philosophy of education

of Friedrich Froebel, 1782-1852 stresses the respect with which the individuality and ability of
each child should be treated; the importance of creating a happy, harmonious environment in
which he or she can grow; and the value of self-activity and play as a foundation on which the
integrated development of the whole person can be built.

Friedrich Froebel was a German eductionalist. He was known best for the founding of
kindergarten. Froebel was born in 1782 in the village of Oberwebach in Thuringia, Germany. His
childhood was difficult because his mother died when he was a baby and his father abandoned
him. Froebel was given to his uncles care, who had a son that died at the age of ten. Froebel
never showed much interest in school except for the field of mathmatics. Despite his many
hardships, he had a strong christian faith and a love for nature. This is what was said to be
central to his thinking as an educationalist. After several attempts of trying to attend the
University, he was finally allowed. This is when he got into debt from tuition payments and was
thrown in prison.

After Froebel's college years, he got a job in the forestry department at Bamberg. After this, he
got a teaching job at Frankfort. His strong christian faith led him to the field of education.
Froebel later married a woman who shared his beliefs and values. She died in 1836 and he
remarried in 1851. Two months after Froebel's 70th birthday, he died.

Froebel first came into teaching through a school run along Pestalozzian lines. He believed that
humans are essentially productive and creative, and that fulfillment comes through developing
these in harmony with God and the world. His vision was to stimulate an appreciation and love
for children, to provide a new but small world for children to play with their age group and
experience their first gentle taste of independence. His kindergarten system consisted of games
and songs, construction, and gifts and occupations. The play materials were what he called gifts
and the activities were occupations. His system allowed children to compare, test, and explore.
His philosophy also consisted of four basic components which were free self-activity, creativity,
social participation, and motor expression. Froebel's kindergarten system grew internationally
as an educational movement. It is a well established part of the American school system as well
as many other parts of the world.

Q.3: Helen Parkhurst

The Dalton Plan is an educational concept created by Helen Parkhurst. Educational thinkers
such as Maria Montessori and John Dewey influencedParkhurst while she created the Dalton
Plan. Their aim was to achieve a balance between a child's talent and the needs of the
community.

Helen Parkhurst, progressive educator, was the founding mother of the Dalton School, an
independent, child-centered school located in New York City. In its early years, the school
survived because of Helen Parkhurst. Her vision and force of personality engendered great
loyalty from her faculty, school parents, board of trustees, and students. Her particular strand
of progressive education, which came to be known as the Dalton Plan, was adopted in places
as distant as Japan. However, Helen Parkhurst, the woman, was an anomaly. Her competence
as a progressive educator was unquestionable, but on a personal level she exhibited a single-
minded persuasiveness, a driving ambition, and an unparalleled ability to use people to
achieve her own ends. I believe that her entrepreneurial approach to education, her forceful
personality, and her single-minded determination were responsible for The Dalton Plan taking
root in the Children’s University School, renamed the Dalton School in 1920.

The American teacher Helen Parkhurst (1886-1973) developed at the beginning of the
twentieth century the Dalton Plan to reform the then current pedagogics and the then usual
manner of classroom management. She wanted to break the teacher-centered lockstep
teaching. During her first experiment, which she implemented in a small elementary school as a
young teacher in 1904, she noticed that when students are given freedom for self-direction and
self-pacing and to help one another, their motivation increases considerably and they learn a
lot more. In a later experiment in 1911 and 1912 Parkhurst re-organized the education in a
large school for nine to fourteen year-olds. Instead of each grade, each subject was appointed
its own teacher and its own classroom. The subject teachers made assignments: they converted
the subject matter for each grade into learning assignments. In this way, learning became the
students’ own work; they could carry out their work independently, work at their own pace and
plan their work themselves. The classroom turned into a laboratory, a place where students are
working, furnished and equipped as work spaces, tailored to meet the requirements of specific
subjects. Useful and attractive learning materials, instruments and reference books were put
within the students’ reach. The benches were replaced by large tables to facilitate co-operation
and group instruction. This second experiment formed the basis for the next experiments,
those in Dalton and New York, from 1919 onwards. The only addition was the use of graphs,
charts enabling students to keep track of their own progress in each subject. From now on it
was called the Dalton Plan.
In 1921 en 1922 Parkhurst explained the theory of the Dalton Plan in a series of articles
published in “The Times Educational Supplement” and in her book “Education on the Dalton
Plan”. It can be reconstructed as follows. The Dalton Plan is an “efficiency measure”: “a simple
and economic reorganization of the school” (Parkhurst, 1922, 46). Lockstep teaching is not
efficient, because: it is the teacher who does all the work. The Dalton Plan “creates conditions
which enable ... the learner to learn” (34). Learning is the same as experience: “Experience is
the best and indeed the only real teacher” (152). The school has to provide for sufficient
experience. This cannot be achieved by keeping students as passive recipients, separating them
from one another, holding them in one place, requiring them to remain silent, making them
learn lessons by heart and subjecting them to whole class recitation. We can provide for
experience through the “liberation of the pupil” and the “socialization of the school” (46). In
the Dalton Plan, freedom is the opportunity to do the schoolwork oneself, to organize it oneself
(how where and when) and to carry it out at one’s own pace, particularly to do it undisturbed
and to work with commitment and concentration. Self-activity brings about experience.
Something similar applies in the Dalton Plan to interaction and co-operation. When students
are permitted to interact and work freely with one another and with teachers, in varying
groups, in varied locations, with varied resources and materials, they come into contact with
one another, the teachers, the subject matter and the learning materials in different ways. This
means more experience and consequently more learning.

Q.4: Paulo Freire (Critical Padagogy)

Critical pedagogy is a teaching method that aims to help in challenging and actively struggling
against any form of social oppression and the related customs and beliefs. It is a form of
theory and practice which serves to let pupils gain a critical awareness Critical pedagogy is a
type of pedagogy in which criticism of the established order and social criticism are essential.
Critical pedagogy wants to question society in its understanding of the role that education has.
From this point of view, social critique is necessary if one does not want an upbringing and
education that contributes to the reproduction of inequality

An important key concept in this is emancipation. It is emancipation, liberation from

oppressive social relations, which critical pedagogy is committed to. Social critique leads to
social change. With this mode of critique we want students to see clearly that phenomena like
inequality are not necessary, but arose in a certain historical context that has been established
and produced by man-made social processes. Upon becoming aware of this reality, a person
no longer needs to feel like a manipulable object anymore.
According to the critical pedagogy, education is inherently political, and any kind of pedagogy
should be aware of this fact. A social and educational vision of justice and equality should
be the basis for any kind of education. The liberation from oppression and human suffering
should be an important dimension in education.

Education should promote both emancipatory change as well as the cultivation of the intellect.
It should be kept in mind that the current education system is a reflection of the interests of
the existing system of exploitation. This dynamic must be exposed by critical pedagogy,
understood, after which action should be taken against it as part of a praxis towards social
change; a cycle of theory, practice, evaluation and reflection.

Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

Paulo Freire is the grandfather and one of the major contributors to critical pedagogy. Freire,
who became a professor of history and philosophy of education at the University of Recife in
Brazil, experienced and learned from the plight of poverty and hunger during the Great
Depression of 1929. This experience imbued in him a deep concern for the poor, which
influenced his views on education.

He is best known for his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” in which he described how
people have have been untaught or have never learned to think critically about their situation.
Most people accept their situation as inevitable and as belonging to life itself. Only when
they become aware of their situation and are able to assign meaning to it (collectively called a
process of “conscientization”), the step a step can be made toward changing the situation.

Four levels of consciousness

Freire speaks in this context of four levels of consciousness:

1) Magical consciousness; at this level of consciousness people experience themselves as

completely impotent to do something about their personal and socio-economic position. They
are, as it were, controlled by outside forces like the gods in mythology who could intervene in
the life of man without being able to defend oneself against them.

2) Naive consciousness; at this level one is able to make a distinction between oneself and the
outside world. Life is not seen as something that just happens to you, but it gets contours in
the sense that there are things that are within your reach, and other things that you think you
need others for. They know that they can do something about their situation, but is also
convinced of not being capable of a lot of other things as well. The difference between the first
and second level of consciousness is that magical consciousness has been transcended by
a more thorough understanding of the existing situation.

3) Critical consciousness; at this level, one discovers not only the distinction between self and
others, but one is also, due to the distinction, able to change things. At this level there is a
growing understanding of one’s own capabilities and because of that also a way of relativizing
the power of others. One will recognize how oppression occurs, which role one has in that
situation and how one can fight it by intervening.

4) Political consciousness; on this highest level people discover from their perception of reality
that others share their perception of reality, and they also share some of the same problems.
This leads to that people combine their strengths and try to influence politics and negate the
situation of oppression. According to Freire “Nobody liberates nobody, nobody liberates
themselves alone: human beings liberate themselves in communion.”

People create their own consciousness of struggle by changing reality and freeing themselves
from the oppression that is embedded by traditional pedagogy. Similarly, when one learns a
new way of thinking, the understanding of one’s own social status has a transformative effect.
Freire’s method has thus two successive moments: the first relates to the awareness of reality
that one is oppressed and is submitted to the decisions imposed by the oppressor, the second
refers to the initiative of the oppressed to fight and emancipate themselves from the
oppressors.

Critique of educational banking

Freire criticized the traditional education method of simply depositing knowledge, or what he
called the “banking concept of education”; which only strengthens the established order.
Instead of communicating with the students, the teacher gives deposits which the students
have to patiently receive. They are not considered as able to do more than to organize and
accumulate the deposits.

This “banking” concept is the reflection of the dichotomous oppressive society we live in: the
teacher knows everything and the students know nothing, the teacher thinks and the students
are being thought, the teacher talks and the students listen obediently.

The success of this method depends on the willingness to swallow. Those who are not willing
to cram themselves with deposits remain supposedly ‘undeveloped’.

Freire looked for a method that is conscientizing and thus comes to the basic principle of his
educational theory: Education can never be neutral, it is either an instrument of liberation
or an instrument of domestication. Or as Richard Shaull formulated it in the preface of the
Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

“There is no neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is

used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring
about conformity to it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom’, the means by which men
and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of
their world.”
Freire adds that this does not depend on the content of the education provided, nor the good
will of the educator, decisive here is the educational process itself.

If the individual does not fight for its interests, and its cultural and social emancipation, it
seems that one has lost the love for life. Thus the necrophilia, that prevails in the world today,
is reproduced by the type of education given at school. The pedagogy that Freire proposes is
the opposite of that described above. It suggests that the individual has a love for life, teaches
a cultivation of being - by being in the world, not of or under the world - a condition brought
about by liberation. This necessitates a kind of education that isn’t alienating and mechanistic.

Education that liberates the individual must be a conscious act in which the content is
understood and analyzed, with the dichotomy that exists between teacher and student is
transcended; it should negate the unidirectional (coming from one side) relationship
to replace it with bidirectionality (coming from both sides) to contribute to the education of
both parties, because both have the elements to offer each other insights. The teacher is
hereby turned into the pupil of his own pupils. “Nobody educates anybody else, nobody
educates himself, people educate each other through their interactions of the world.”

The role of the teacher is to problematize the world, thereby creating the right conditions so
that learning process transcends the 'doxa’ (undoubted axioms) to get to the level of “logos”
(actual understanding). This type of learning helps people to create new with the expectations
and reach a reflective state where they discover their own reality. It creates new
challenges that instigates pupils to self-construction of the world, in which they have a real
and direct participation in the activities in which they are involved. All this demands that we
problematize the individual as such, without mediation by artificial experiences in the learning
process.

Dialogics and conscientization

Man is not allowed to understand reality and change it in an education that is just one method
to adapt to reality. To bring the awareness process in motion there must be dialogue, because
man does not create oneself in silence, but by words, actions and reflection. The use of such a
dialogue is the main element in the learning process.

To understand the reasoning of Freire one should start from his image of man. Through their
actions people work on the world, they change the world. Because of their ability to reflect,
people take distance from themselves, from their actions, from the world; this reflection again
leads to action. The aforementioned cycle forms the praxis, that is to say the way in which the
human being is manifested in the world. “To become human” happens in praxis. No
seperation can therefore be made between action and reflection.

Dialogue can only happen by the speaking of “own words” with which the individual reflects its
reality, it is the only way to get the understanding of this reality and change it. In opposition to
the depository education system that maintains the system, Freire proposes
the problematizing education with consciëntisering (coming to consciousness) as a goal.
Learning is not 'eating’ of false words, it is not programming, learning problematizing by raising
questions. The subject matter is the life situation of the pupil.

Dialogics and antidialogics

Freire recognizes that the practice of conscientization that he recommends can run up against
“limiting situations”, and that these situations are a product of the resistance by the
oppressing classes to any change of the status quo, which is so important to them. This can
lead to defeat and apathy among the oppressed classes. According to Freire it is “not the
apathy of the masses which leads to the power of the elite, but it is the power of the elite,
which makes the masses apathetic.”

For this Freire worked out opposing frameworks for cultural action, antidialogics and dialogics,
the former being the oppressive one, and works through submission, division, manipulation,
and cultural invasion and the latter the liberating one, which works through cooperation,
association, organization, and cultural synthesis.

The oppressor uses antidialogics in different ways in order to maintain the status quo. He
subdues the oppressed with an unwavering unilateral dialogue , in which the communication is
transformed into a necrophiliac act . The ideological instrument is often used here for
complete submission.

The oppressor also attempts to dissuade people to unite through dialogue. One of their
main activities is to weaken the oppressed through alienation , with the idea that this will
provide internal divisions, and that in this way things will remain stable. In their implicit
discourse they warn that it is dangerous for “social harmony” to talk about concepts
like association and organization. Compared with those who fight against them, the
oppressors seem the the only ones who can maintain the needed harmony in life. But this is
only an attempt to ensure divisions. If an individual decides to fight for liberation the person is
stigmatized, all in an attempt to avoid the historically inevitable realization of freedom.

The oppressor also uses antidialogics by abusing ideology to manipulate people and to
agree with the goals proposed by the oppressor, but entirely at the expense of the oppressed.

Freire discussed as the last feature of antidialogics that of cultural invasion, where the
oppressed are the turned into objects, while the oppressors are the actors and authors of the
process. This is a subliminal tactic that is used to control and leads to the inauthenticity of
individuals. The greater the level of imitation by the oppressed, the greater the calm for
the oppressors. What happens to the masses is a loss of values, a transformation in their way
of speaking and willingly supporting the oppressor.
In contrast with antidialogics, dialogics is a form of community empowerment. This process is
not due to the presence of some prophetic leader, but by the covenant that occurs when
there is communication and interaction between the leader and the masses in order to to
achieve liberation and discover the world, instead of adjust to it. This happens when there is
mutual trust, so that a revolutionary praxis can be developed, where humility and constant
dialogue is needed by all participants.

To complement this collaboration it is necessary to form associations with the joint effort
towards liberation. This implies a form of cultural action that teaches to join a revolutionary
aspiration without falling into ideological hyperbole. Instead, the goal should be described as
something it really is, namely a human act, not some exaggerated event. Dialogical action also
requires the organization to avoid ideological coercion from above.

Organization is a necessary element of revolutionary struggle, it implies coherence between

action and practice, courage, radicalization without sectarianism and the courage to love. All
these aspects should be present without naivety . Of course, for revolutionary action, there
must also be discipline, order, precise objectives, clear tasks to be fulfilled and accountability,
but dialogics is mainly about the awakening that is required from the encountered oppression.

The final characteristic of dialogical action is the cultural synthesis that aims to overcome the
contradiction created by the oppressor. This addresses the strength of one’s own culture as a
creative act and avenges the oppressed by giving another perception on the world than
the one imposed without consultation or assessment.

The role of revolution

Revolution is for Paulo Freire removal of the structures and mechanisms that cause different
forms of oppression in the society. It is about overturning political and economic powers that
the are the cause of the oppression of the majority. The conscientization is assigned an
essential role here. The oppressed must be made not only aware of their own value, they must
also be freed from their image of man that they derive from the oppressors with whom
they have an ambivalent relationship.

For Freire dialogue belongs to the essence of being human: human life is not live 'alone’, they
live 'together’ in the world. In that sense, the oppressor maimed his own humanity, because he
is not 'the others’. Revolution implies, in addition to the empowerment and recognition of the
human dignity of the oppressed, at the same time humanizing the oppressors.
Interrogating the Text

Reading Closely, Reading Critically

This assignment will guide the students to become more expert readers by asking them to actively interrogate a text.
Students will analyze a passage by breaking it down into its component parts, looking at how each part functions in
the overall performance of that text. The goal of this assignment is for good questioning to become common practice
in the classroom. Interrogating the Text is not meant to be a one-time activity. It is a method used to help students
develop as active readers who critically explore the texts they read.

Primary and Secondary Sources

A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work
of art.

Some examples of primary source formats include: archives and manuscript material.
photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, films. journals, letters and diaries.

Secondary Sources

In contrast, a secondary source of information is one that was created later by someone who
did not experience first-hand or participate in the events or conditions you're researching. For
the purposes of a historical research project, secondary sources are generally scholarly books
and articles

Published research, newspaper articles, and other media are typical secondary
sources. Secondary sources can, however, cite both primary sources and secondary
sources
 Characteristics of Academic text

Structure is an important feature of academic writing. A well-structured text enables the reader
to follow the argument and navigate the text. In academic writing a clear structure and a logical
flow are imperative to a cohesive text. ... Most academic texts follow established structures

The term academic writing refers to the forms of expository and argumentative prose used by
university students, faculty, and researchers to convey a body of information about a particular
subject. Generally, academic writing is expected to be precise, semi-formal, impersonal, and
objective

It is also well organised and planned.

 Complexity. Written language is relatively more complex than spoken language. ...
 Formality. Academic writing is relatively formal. ...
 Precision. In academic writing, facts and figures are given precisely. ...
 Objectivity. ...
 Explicitness. ...
 Accuracy. ...
 Hedging. ...
 Responsibility.

Introduction

Academic writing in English is linear, which means it has one central point or
theme with every part contributing to the main line of argument, without
digressions or repetitions. Its objective is to inform rather than entertain. As
well as this it is in the standard written form of the language.There are ten
main features of academic writing that are often discussed. Academic writing
is to some extent: complex, formal, objective, explicit, hedged, and
responsible. It uses language precisely and accurately. It is also well
organised and planned.

Complexity

Written language is relatively more complex than spoken language. Written

language has longer words, it is lexically more dense and it has a more varied
vocabulary. It uses more noun-based phrases than verb-based phrases.
Written texts are shorter and the language has more grammatical complexity,
including more subordinate clauses and more passives.

Formality

Academic writing is relatively formal. In general this means that in an essay

you should avoid colloquial words and expressions.

Precision

In academic writing, facts and figures are given precisely.

Objectivity

Written language is in general objective rather than personal. It therefore has

fewer words that refer to the writer or the reader. This means that the main
emphasis should be on the information that you want to give and the
arguments you want to make, rather than you. For that reason, academic
writing tends to use nouns (and adjectives), rather than verbs (and adverbs).

Explicitness

Academic writing is explicit about the relationships int he text. Furthermore, it

is the responsibility of the writer in English to make it clear to the reader how
the various parts of the text are related. These connections can be made
explicit by the use of different signalling words.

Accuracy

Academic writing uses vocabulary accurately. Most subjects have words with
narrow specific meanings. Linguistics distinguishes clearly between
"phonetics" and "phonemics"; general English does not.
Hedging

In any kind of academic writing you do, it is necessary to make decisions

about your stance on a particular subject, or the strength of the claims you are
making. Different subjects prefer to do this in different ways.

A technique common in certain kinds of academic writing is known by linguists

as a ‘hedge’.

Responsibility

In academic writing you must be responsible for, and must be able to provide
evidence and justification for, any claims you make. You are also responsible
for demonstrating an understanding of any source texts you use.

Organisation

Academic writing is well organised. It flows easily from one section to the next
in a logical fashion. A good place to start is the genre of your text. Once you
have decided on the genre, the structure is easily determined..

Planning

Academic writing is well planned. It usually takes place after research and
evaluation, according to a specific purpose and plan.

The status of evidence

The Stages of Change model has become a prominent feature within health promotion and most of the
literature associated with the model portrays it as being 'effective'. Based on an extensive review of the
literature, this paper suggests that contrary to this view, there exist a relative paucity of sufficiently strong
supportive evidence. The paper describes the features of the existing evidence base, and highlights
problems in relation to various aspects of design and execution. Two wider issues relating to the core
nature of the model and the evidence associated with it are identified as important and discussed. Two
main conclusions are drawn. First, better quality quantitative outcome studies are needed. These should
be complemented with significant qualitative case studies with a focus on practitioner and organizational
utilization of the model. Second, the disproportionate popularity of the model may be skewing the
practical and conceptual nature of health promotion. Stages of Change activities are seen to equate to
'health promotion' at the expense of other activities and approaches.

Compare and Contrast Information from Different

Sources”
 PURPOSES OF THE LESSON:
 Compare and contrast information from different sources about the same topic;
 Discover the importance of using multiple resources as a researcher;
 Begin to synthesize information learned from research;
 Extend expertise by sharing information orally with peers and addressing their
questions.
Questions to
Lesson Consider While Teacher
Supporting
Segment Segment Focus Viewing (Links Commentary
Documents
(Video Clip) toFacilitator (Video Clip)
Notes for PLC)

Why do you think it  Facilitator Notes

Students completed was important for Unit Outline
Immersion and the children to
Prior to the
Investigation spend several Artifacts:  Correlation to State
Lesson
phases of the days investigating Previous Standards
inquiry a type of weather Lessons
of their choice?
 Suggested Readings
How does the
Review information
teacher set the
Connect/Engage collected from two
students up to be  Unit Outline
(2:53) resources in
successful in the
previous lessons
lesson?
 Lesson Plan
The teacher models
How does the
and guides
teacher support
students to notice  Lesson Transcript
students in
information that is
Model/Guide learning how to Model/Guide 1
the same and
(6:45) compare and (1:37)
different between  Teacher
contrast
the two resources Commentary
information from
in the class Transcript
research?
example (tsunami)

What authentic  Lesson Artifacts:

Students work in Previous Lessons
purposes for Collaborative
their weather
comparing and Practice (2:04)
Collaborative groups to compare
contrasting
Practice (5:50) and contrast Lesson Artifacts: 
information do the Lesson Artifacts:
information from Current Lesson
students begin to Current Lesson
their two resources
discover in this
 lesson?

Students from each In what ways do

expert group share you think the
similarities and children’s
differences in their understanding of
Share (5:35) Share (4:23)
research, and being a researcher
respond to is growing in this
questions from their coalesce phase of
peers the inquiry?

 What are your

overall thoughts or
questions about
the lesson?
 What insights did
Lesson Teacher/colleague this lesson provide Lesson
Reflection and discussion about into the process of Reflection (2:07)
Next Steps the lesson an inquiry unit and
how inquiry helps
develop both
literacy and
content
knowledge?
Unit 5
5.1 Reflection Issues, Significance

The Importance of Teacher Reflection

Growing in the Teaching Profession through Reflection

While there is agreement among education researchers that reflective teachers are effective
teachers, there very little evidence in recent research to recommend just how much reflection
teachers need to do. There is also very little evidence in past research that outlines just how a
teacher should reflect on his or her practice. Yet there is undisputed evidence that suggests
that teaching without reflection can lead to bad practice, imitation in instruction Lortie (1975).

So how important is the use of reflection to a teacher's practice?

The research suggests that the amount of reflection or how that reflection is recorded is not
nearly as important as when the teacher has had the opportunity to reflect on his or her
teaching. Teachers who wait to reflect may not be as accurate in their reflections about what
happens during the "swampy lowlands of practice." In other words, if a teacher's reflection is
distanced by time, that reflection may revise the past to fit a present belief.

In an article titled "Teacher Reflection In a Hall of Mirrors: Historical Influences and Political
Reverberations" (2003), the researcher Lynn Fendler makes the case that teachers are already
reflective by nature as they continuously make adjustments in instruction.

"...the laborious attempts to facilitate reflective practices for teachers fly in the face of
the truism expressed in the epigraph of this article, namely, that there is no such thing as an
unreflective teacher."

Teachers spend so much time preparing for and delivering lessons, that it is easy to see why
they often do not spend their valuable time to record their reflections on lessons in journals
unless required. Instead, most teachers reflect-in-action, a term suggested by researcher
Donald Schon (1987). This kind of reflection-in-action is the kind of reflection that occurs in the
classroom in order to produce a necessary change at that moment.

This form of reflection-in-action is slightly different than reflection-on-action. In reflection-on-

action, the teacher considers past actions relative soon after instruction in order to be ready
for an adjustment in a similar situation.

So, while reflection cannot be packaged as prescribed practice, there is a general understanding
that teacher reflection-in-action or on-action results in effective teaching.
Methods of Teacher Reflection

Despite the lack of concrete evidence supporting reflection as an effective practice and the lack
of available time, a teacher's reflection is required by many school districts as part of
the teacher evaluation program.

There are many different ways that teachers can include reflection as part of their own path
towards professional development and to satisfy evaluation programs.

A daily reflection is when teachers take a few moments at the end of the day to debrief on the
day's events. Typically, this should not take more than a few moments. When reflection is done
over a period of time, the information can be illuminating. Some teachers keep a daily
journal while others simply jot down notes about issues that they had in class. Consider asking,
"What worked in this lesson?

How do I know it worked?"

At the end of a teaching unit, once assessments have all been graded, a teacher may want to
take some time to reflect on the unit as a whole. Answering questions can help guide teachers
as they decide what they want to keep and what they want to change the next time they teach
the same unit.

For example,

 "Overall which lessons worked and which didn't?"

 "With which skills did students struggle the most? Why?"

 "Which learning objectives seemed the easiest for students? What made those work
better?"

 "Were the end results of the unit what I had expected and hoped for? Why or why not?"

At the end of a semester or school year, a teacher may look back over the students' grades in
order to try and make an overall judgment about the practices and strategies that are positive
as well as areas that need improvement.

What To Do With Reflections

Reflecting on what went right and wrong with lessons and classroom situations is one thing.
However, figuring out what to do with that information is quite another. Time spent in
reflection can help ensure that this information can be used to produce real change for growth
to occur.
There are several ways teachers can use the information they learned about themselves
through reflection:

 Teachers can reflect on their successes and find reasons to celebrate. They may use
their reflections to recommend the actions that lead to success for students in next
year's lessons.

 Teachers can individually or collectively reflect on areas that need improvement and
look for areas where lessons did not have the desired academic impact.

 Teachers can reflect on any housekeeping issues that arose or areas where classroom
management needed some work.

Reflection is an ongoing process and someday, the evidence may provide more specific
guidelines for teachers. Reflection as a practice in education is evolving, and so are teachers.

5.2 The Importance of Reflection

BY TARYN SANDERS

Have you ever sat in your classroom after a long day of teaching, thinking about the lessons you
taught that day?

You may have asked yourself why the math lesson went so well or why the social studies lesson
seemed to confuse the students so much.

We’ve all been there! As teachers, we spend many hours planning and executing lessons, but
when some lessons that we thought were going to go well do not, we may wonder, “What
happened and why?”

Those are good questions and an important step in our development as educators. Asking
ourselves questions helps us to reflect upon what we did and why we made the choices we did.

Reflection is deliberate and structured thinking about choices. It is an integral step to improving
our practice. Through reflection, we as educators can look clearly at our successes and struggles
and consider options for change.

In PIP, we teach our participants how to use reflection to take charge of their pedagogy.

We introduce them to specific types of questioning and open-ended statements that push
thinking to a much higher level.
It takes hard mental work. Learning to think this way does not happen overnight, but it is well
worth the effort. In fact, Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching includes reflecting on
teaching practice as an essential aspect of quality teaching.

We reflect upon the information or data we collect about what is happening in the classroom.

So let’s go back to you sitting in your classroom staring at that lesson plan into which you put so
much effort, the one that just didn’t work out.

How can you reflect on what happened? You can start by asking yourself some basic reflective
questions. Or, you might want to share your thinking by having a deeper reflective conversation
with a trusted colleague.

As intervenors, we have reflective conversations with teachers to help them discover their own
thinking process. This helps them figure out why things happened as they did.

Such a conversation might start this way:

I put a lot of effort into planning this lesson and it just didn’t work. The students were confused,
and many told me they didn’t understand.

Now that your colleague knows your concerns, he or she can use clarifying questions to help
you self-reflect, such as:

How did you expect the lesson plan to support your teaching?

I thought that I knew what I was going to teach, since I planned it.

So you planned out what you were going to do. Did that help when you delivered the lesson?

It did as I began, but then as I kept teaching I felt like I was lost.

At exactly what point did that happen?

Well, it was when I was doing the think aloud. I knew where I was going to stop and think, but I
wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to say.

Oh, so it seems you noted in your lesson plan where you were going to stop and think aloud....

But I didn’t write what I was going to say, and that is when I got lost. I thought I had planned
the lesson so well, but now I see if I’m going to be clear so that the students understand the
mini-lesson, I need to write what I will say, not only when I’m going to say it.
This is typical of what happens when you have a reflective conversation: The answers become
clear.

It doesn’t take much questioning; it just takes the opportunity to think about what happened in
a nonjudgmental, supportive manner.

The conversations are organic and flow naturally from each response. All that is necessary is to
listen carefully to what is said or not said.

As intervenors, we have had a lot of experience doing this, but you and your colleagues can do
it just as well with practice. Once you have had the opportunity to try reflective conversations,
you will want to have them more often as a way to deepen your understanding of your teaching
practice.

Reflective conversations like the one you just read don’t have to be about only lesson planning.

Maybe you have noticed that your students are antsy sitting on the rug during your mini-
lessons. This is another situation that lends itself to a reflective conversation in which you and
your colleague could discuss what changes you might make so that students will be more
engaged during future lessons.

Another important part of reflecting is being able to explain your thinking. Just answering the
questions by saying, “I did this” is not enough. True reflection comes when teachers think about
and explain what they were thinking and why. For example, here is another possible
conversation between a teacher and a trusted colleague:

I noticed that the students were very inattentive while I delivered the lesson.

How did you know that? What did you hear and see?

I saw them losing focus and some of them began talking.

At what point during the lesson did you notice this?

When I was modeling what the students had to do for the independent work.

What had you done before that?

I had already reviewed the previous lesson; then we had a conversation about something from
that lesson. After that, I read from a book and then I got to my think aloud….Wow! I hadn’t
realized I had done all of that before the modeling. The students must have been sitting on the
rug for a long time. I hadn’t realized.

So you are saying the students were antsy because they were on the rug for a long time.
Yes, I need to pay attention to how long my lessons are running and change what I am doing if
they begin to get too long.

Through this conversation, the teacher was able to see for herself the reason her students were
antsy. As a result, she now knows what she will do to change this.

Looking at student work gives us another wonderful opportunity to deepen our thinking about
our practice. We can learn a great deal by looking at the work our students produce. Here, too,
a reflective conversation with a colleague can be an eye-opener. A conversation might go like
this:

From examining the student work, did most of the class learn what you intended?

Yes, most did.

Did you meet your instructional goals?

These types of questions help clarify what happened; however, we shouldn’t stop there. We
can reflect more deeply to bring our understanding further such as with this question:

Did you notice any patterns from the students who did not seem to get it?

Yes, the students who got it did very well; but those who did not left so much blank.

So you are saying that the students who didn’t get it were really confused.

When having a reflective conversation, it can be very helpful when the listener paraphrases
what was said. It helps clarify the idea; plus, hearing your own words helps substantiate what
was said:

Yes, that’s it. They just didn’t do what I expected.

Why do you think that might have happened?

Well, I noticed that the kids who didn’t get it were mostly the ELLs. Maybe they were confused
by the academic language. Maybe next time I will work with these students in a small group to
support them and provide them with extra help with the vocabulary.
During the intervention process, our goal is to help participants realize for themselves what
changes need to be made.

We do this by helping them take questioning to a much higher level, called metacognition or
meta-cognitive thinking. The formal definition of meta-cognitive thinking is “having an
awareness and self-regulation of one’s own thinking processes.”

This is the inner voice that helps a master teacher monitor decisions, choices and the impact of
her actions. It is the process of saying, “OK, I’ve thought about how to plan this lesson, how to
execute it and even had a reflective conversation about it with my colleague. Now, what can I
do to ensure its success?”

At this level, one is thinking about one’s own thinking by asking oneself, “Did I consider
everything I needed to? Were my ideas about the lesson the thoughts I needed to have?”

For a master teacher, metacognition comes both before and after the lesson.

This level of thinking requires time to develop, but with repeated use, the awareness gained
through this type of reflective practice leads to increased confidence in pedagogical decision-
making.

As intervenors, we help teachers reach this level of thinking by structuring opportunities for our
participants to reflect on their practice based on the data collected. The first step is to focus on
one small element at a time. It is impossible to think about what you did if the concept is too
large.

For example, a teacher wants to meet to discuss student engagement. She wants to make sure
her students are involved in their own learning, that they are excited about the material. Our
conversation might proceed like this:

What exactly are your concerns?

Well, I noticed that some of my students don’t seem interested in the present unit.

Looking at the data will help this teacher be more specific, thereby leading her to make her own
discoveries and then to use metacognition to change what is happening.

How do you know that they are not interested?

I can see.
Can I suggest that we collect some information from the students? We might give them a
survey and see exactly how they feel.

Later, after a survey, the conversation might continue:

Looking at the results of the survey, what do you notice?

Well, actually, most of the students seem to like the unit, but a few don’t like that it requires
working in groups.

What do you think about that?

When I planned the unit, I thought that they would like working together, but now I see some
students don’t.

So what you are saying is that some of your students aren’t engaged because they don’t want
to work in a group.

Yes, exactly. Then maybe it would be all right for those students to work alone. I can tweak the
assignment to help them become more engaged.

Do you think that would work?

Yes, I think so. In fact it will be interesting to get a different perspective on the work from the
students who are working alone. I’m excited about seeing what they do.

This is an example of a teacher becoming metacognitive. By thinking about her own thinking,
she realized what options she had and how she could turn things around to achieve her goal. It
takes practice, but using metacognition can help you become a great teacher.

Reflection, or the deliberate and structured thinking about the choices and decisions we make
as educators, is an integral step in improving our practice. The change or move to best practices
comes from the ability to reflect and then use this new understanding to do things differently
than in the past.
Unit No 6. Cr. Thinking

6.1= John Dewey

Throughout the United States and the world at large, the name of John Dewey has become
synonymous with the Progressive education movement. Dewey has been generally
recognized as the most renowned and influential American philosopher of education.

He was born in 1859 in Burlington, Vermont, and he died in New York City in 1952. During his
lifetime the United States developed from a simple frontier-agricultural society to a complex
urban-industrial nation, and Dewey developed his educational ideas largely in response to
this rapid and wrenching period of cultural change. His father, whose ancestors came to
America in 1630, was the proprietor of Burlington's general store, and his mother was the
daughter of a local judge. John, the third of their four sons, was a shy boy and an average
student. He delivered newspapers, did his chores, and enjoyed exploring the woodlands and
waterways around Burlington. His father hoped that John might become a mechanic, and it is
quite possible that John might not have gone to college if the University of Vermont had not
been located just down the street. There, after two years of average work, he graduated first
in a class of 18 in 1879.

There were few jobs for college graduates in Burlington, and Dewey spent three anxious
months searching for work. Finally, a cousin who was the principal of a high school in South
Oil City, Pennsylvania, offered him a teaching position which paid $40 a month. After two
years of teaching high school Latin, algebra, and science, Dewey returned to Burlington to
teach in a rural school closer to home.

With the encouragement of H. A. P. Torrey, his former philosophy professor at the University
of Vermont, Dewey wrote three philosophical essays (1882a; 1882b; 1883) which were
accepted for publication in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, whose editor, William
Torrey Harris, hailed them as the products of a first-rate philosophical mind. With this taste of
success and a $500 loan from his aunt, Dewey left teaching to do graduate work at Johns
Hopkins University. There he studied philosophy–which at that time and place primarily
meant Hegelian philosophy and German idealism–and wrote his dissertation on the
psychology of Kant.

After he received the doctorate in 1884, Dewey was offered a $900-a-year instructorship in
philosophy and psychology at the University of Michigan. In his first year at Michigan, Dewey
not only taught but also produced his first major book, Psychology (1887). In addition, he
met, wooed, and married Alice Chipman, a student at Michigan who was herself a former
schoolteacher. Fatherhood and ten years' teaching experience helped his interest in
psychology and philosophy to merge with his growing interest in education.
In 1894 the University of Chicago offered Dewey the chairmanship of the department of
philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy. At Chicago he established the now-famous laboratory
school (commonly known as the Dewey School), where he scientifically tested, modified, and
developed his psychological and educational ideas.

An early statement of his philosophical position in education, My Pedagogic Creed (1897),

appeared three years after his arrival at Chicago. Four other major educational writings came
out of Dewey's Chicago experience. The first two, The School and Society (1956), which was
first published in 1899, and The Child and the Curriculum (1902), were lectures which he
delivered to raise money and gain support for the laboratory school.

Dewey retired in 1930 but was immediately appointed professor emeritus of philosophy in
residence at Columbia and held that post until his eightieth birthday in 1939. The previous
year he had published his last major educational work, Experience and Education (1938). In
this series of lectures he clearly restated his basic philosophy of education and recognized
and rebuked the many excesses he thought the Progressive education movement had
committed. He chastised the Progressives for casting out traditional educational practices and
content without offering something positive and worthwhile to take their place. He offered a
reformulation of his views on the intimate connection between learning and experience and
challenged those who would call themselves Progressives to work toward the realization of
the educational program he had carefully outlined a generation before.

At the age of ninety he published his last large-scale original philosophical work, Knowing
andthe Known (1949), in collaboration with Arthur F. Bentley.

Experience and Reflective Thinking

The starting place in Dewey's philosophy and educational theory is the world of everyday life.
Unlike many philosophers, Dewey did not search beyond the realm of ordinary experience to
find some more fundamental and enduring reality. For Dewey, the everyday world of
common experience was all the reality that man had access to or needed. Dewey was greatly
impressed with the success of the physical sciences in solving practical problems and in
explaining, predicting, and controlling man's environment. He considered the scientific mode
of inquiry and the scientific systematization of human experience the highest attainment in
the evolution of the mind of man, and this way of thinking and approaching the world
became a major feature of his philosophy. In fact, he defined the educational process as a
"continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience" (1916, p. 50), for
he believed that it is only through experience that man learns about the world and only by
the use of his experience that man can maintain and better himself in the world.

Dewey was careful in his writings to make clear what kinds of experiences were most
valuable and useful. Some experiences are merely passive affairs, pleasant or painful but not
educative. An educative experience, according to Dewey, is an experience in which we make
a connection between what we do to things and what happens to them or us in consequence;
the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities among
events. Thus, if a child reaches for a candle flame and burns his hand, he experiences pain,
but this is not an educative experience unless he realizes that touching the flame resulted in a
burn and, moreover, formulates the general expectation that flames will produce burns if
touched. In just this way, before we are formally instructed, we learn much about the world,
ourselves, and others. It is this natural form of learning from experience, by doing and then
reflecting on what happened, which Dewey made central in his approach to schooling.

Reflective thinking and the perception of relationships arise only in problematical situations.
As long as our interaction with our environment is a fairly smooth affair we may think of
nothing or merely daydream, but when this untroubled state of affairs is disrupted we have a
problem which must be solved before the untroubled state can be restored. For example, a
man walking in a forest is suddenly stopped short by a stream which blocks his path, and his
desire to continue walking in the same direction is thwarted. He considers possible solutions
to his problem–finding or producing a set of stepping-stones, finding and jumping across a
narrow part, using something to bridge the stream, and so forth–and looks for materials or
conditions to fit one of the proposed solutions. He finds an abundance of stones in the area
and decides that the first suggestion is most worth testing. Then he places the stones in the
water, steps across to the other side, and is off again on his hike. Such an example illustrates
all the elements of Dewey's theoretical description of reflective thinking: A real problem
arises out of present experiences, suggestions for a solution come to mind, relevant data are
observed, and a hypothesis is formed, acted upon, and finally tested.

Learning Science through Reflective Inquiry John Dewey’s model of inquiry is quite
appropriate for didactic interpretation in the context of Science education because it includes
methods of scientific inquiry in the field of Natural Sciences – observation and experiment.
This part of the model is very important from a didactic point of view because the method is
inseparable from knowledge and the actions related to achieving them. To attain the goals of
Science education the reconstructed model of J. Dewey for learning through reflective inquiry
could put an emphasis on reflection on the experiment which includes in itself observation as
an inseparable component
 • intellectual reflection – How did you conduct the experiment? What data from the
experiment you understand/don’t understand? What surprises you? What conclusions did
you draw, and why? What do you know about the object(s) that you carried out? What is it
that you still don’t know about it/them? What more would you like to learn? • personal
reflection – What was most difficult for you/what do you consider your most successful
actions? Why? How did you feel during the experiment? What did you learn about
yourself/your knowledge and skills during the experiment? What should you improve as far
as your actions are concerned?

• reflection-dialogue – Who was the most active person during the conduction and analysis
of the experiment? Who was most emotional? Were there any disputes? Were there
differences of opinion when formulating the conclusions? Did your classmates take your
opinion into consideration? Whom did your classmates take into consideration most often?

• praxiological reflection – What knowledge/skills were necessary to complete the

experiment? How could the completion of the experiment be improved? How can the data
from the experiment be used? What is required in order to be able to apply the new
knowledge/skills in practice? In the role of didactic means which ensure activating various
types of reflection the so called reflective cards can be used. The reflective cards are an
effective means for fast but focused reflection on action (Ghaye&Lillyman, 2006). Various
aspects for evaluating the qualities of the activities, of the cognitive and emotional sates of
the students can be included in them. Conclusions It is a generally accepted opinion that the
value of studying Science through reflective inquiry lies in the opportunity for the student to
take on the role of a researcher and from this stand point to realize how the process of
science knowledge develops and how knowledge is attained. That is why there is a search for
innovative ideas how to operationalize students’ reflection for effective implementation of
this type of inquiry. Тhis interpretive framework shows that there is a possibility to draw new
didactic ideas for actualizing reflection on the basis of Dewey’s model of reflective inquiry.
The authors abandon the generally accepted idea that the stages of reflective thinking are the
main element of this model. The emphasis is moved towards the connection between
reflection and the actions in the course of the inquiry. This allows for reconstructing Dewey’s
model as a model of knowing in action in which the methods of observation and experiment
stand out. The reconstructed Dewey’s model could facilitate the better understanding of
reflective inquiry in Science education practice, could help teachers encourage students to
learn actively through reflective inquiry and to enrich their cognitive experience, improve
their science literacy. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Reviewer for
the constructive notes and valuable suggestions for editing this manuscript. References
6.2= L. Stanhouse

L.stanhouse reflective practioner

1. 1. By shah nawazunar 02-11-2017

2. 2. Introduction  Born in 1926 Stenhouse was a British Educational Theorist who was
credited to reshaping the curriculum What is his theory? Lawrence Stenhouse (1975)
produced one of the best- known explorations of a process model of curriculum
theory and practice.  After teaching for a number of years, Stenhouse worked at
Durham University in the mid-1950s before moving to Jordanhill College in Glasgow.
Then, in 1967, Stenhouse became Director of the Humanities Curriculum Project
(HCP), which Elliott and Norris consider his ‘greatest achievement’

3. 3. Stenhouse theory  He defined curriculum tentatively: "A curriculum is an attempt

to communicate the essential principles and features of an educational proposal in
such a form that it is open to critical scrutiny and capable of effective translation into
practice." A curriculum, like the recipe for a dish, is first seen as a possibility, then the
subject of experiment. The recipe offered publicly is in a sense a report on the
experiment. Similarly, a curriculum should be grounded in practice. It is an attempt to
describe the work observed in classrooms. Finally, within limits, a recipe can be varied
according to taste - so can a curriculum.

4. 4. Stenhouse theory Stenhouse likens curriculum to a recipe in cookery......

Stenhouse process theory promotes: • More student choice. • Looks at curriculum not
as a physical thing but as the interaction of lecturers, students and knowledge. •
Content and means are developed as teachers and students work together. • There is
a clear focus on learning, rather than teaching – lecturers and students as partners in
meaning-making. • Curriculum as an active rather than technical exercise.

5. 5. Stenhouse and research It was in Stenhouse’s work with the Humanities
Curriculum Project (1967-72) that he first started to question the role of academic
research in improving education. Questioning the power relationship that put
teachers in a position of authority over students let to a questioning of the power
structure that placed academic researchers, who were influencing the ways teachers
taught and students learned, in a position of authority over teachers and schools.
Stenhouse believed that studying, developing, and experimenting with curricula was
the task of teachers, not academic researchers. How does this demonstrate in today's
practice? * Group discussions * Evaluation of our lessons * Promoting Independent
Learners * Team meetings * Self-assessment and peer assessment 
6. 6. Stenhouse and research  Lawrence Stenhouse, for those who don’t know, based
his thinking on an epistemological thesis that emphasised the provisionality of
knowledge and research. He believed, however, that this thesis had implications for
teaching in so far as a curriculum is itself an object of enquiry that is tested in the
classroom and seminar by both teachers and students. A curriculum is nothing more
than a series of hypotheses that can be refined but never perfected.

7. 7. Stenhouse and research  Consequently, Stenhouse stressed that education is a

matter of process rather than the achievement of prescribed objectives: the aim of
education is itself enshrined in the process of enquiry. Moreover - and this is crucial -
he never believed that enquiry could only be conducted by the most able. He held
strongly to the view that young people of all abilities and backgrounds could be
encouraged to think of their learning in terms of enquiry. Behind Stenhouse’s
educational theory was a firm and generous democratic conviction that was
thoroughly optimistic about what human beings could achieve. Moreover, he viewed
this achievement not as the mere fulfilling of individual potential but as sharing in and
participating in a democratic culture. What is striking about Stenhouse the person,
however, is that he found the energy and purpose to try and make these ideas
actually happen in the classroom. He was an intellectual all right, but one with strong
pragmatic abilities as well.

8. 8. Stenhouse on reflective practice  In England we have a rich history of practitioner

enquiry, embodied in the notion of teacher-as-researcher, accredited to Stenhouse
(1975) and indicated in more recent discussions of practitioner enquiry (Menter et al.
2011; BERA-RSA, 2014; Leat et al. 2014).  “As a starting point I shall define research
as 'systematic inquiry made public'. Like all such definitions this is too simple.
However, it alerts you to my point of view and puts research in a particular
perspective, and I hope this will serve to relate my argument to your own positi on”.
(stenhouse,1975)

9. 9. Stenhouse on educational research  “Inquiry is a teleological pattern of action

whose purpose is satisfaction, and it is related psychologically to curiosity, a
disposition to explore the environment in order to assess its potential for yielding
satisfactions”.  “Whon I address the problem of the application of research to
education, I conceive it in terms of research lodged within the broad tradition of
scholarship which I have just sketched. And, of course, the crucial issue in education,
as in other applied fields, is that of the relationship of scholarship and research to
action”. (stenhouse, 1975)
 10. 10. Conclusion  Research can be adequately applied to education only when it
develops theory which can be tested by teachers in classrooms.  Research guides
action by generating action research (or at least the adoption of action as a systematic
mode of inquiry). Action research in education rests upon the designirr of procedures
in schools which meet both action criteria and research criterion, that is, experiments
which can he justified both on the grounds of what they teach teachers and
researchers and on the grounds of what they teach pupils. A systematic structure of
such procedures 1 call a hypothetical curriculum. Such a curriculum is the appropriate
experimental procedure through which research is applied by testing, refining, and
generating theory in the laboratory of the classroom.

6.3=The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon

John Dewey (1904, 1933) was among the first to write about Reflective Practice with his
exploration of experience, interaction and reflection. Schön, followed theories of Dewey.
He defines reflective practice as the practice by which professionals become aware of their
implicit knowledge base and learn from their experience. He sets the problem in the first part
of the book in chapters 1&2 in which he questions the limitation of technical rationality
that seems to ignore the importance of problem setting in problem solving activity, which leads
to a crisis of confidence in professional knowledge.

Basically, in this book Schön questions:

 in practice of various kind, what form does reflection in action take? What are the
differences? and what features of the process are similar?

 Reflection in action may be directed to strategies, theories, frames or role of frames.

How do these processes interact with one another, and how does technical problem
solving relate to them?

 Is there a kind of rigor peculiar to reflection-in-action and, if so, how is it like and unlike
rigorous technical problem solving?

 What sets the limits of our ability to reflect-in-action? How do individuals and
institutional constraints interact with one another? And in what directions should we
look to increase the scope and depths of reflection-in-action.

A brief Introduction for Donald A. Schon

Donald Schön with Horst Rittel and Herbert Simon are amongst the early contributors of
cognitive design theory. After doing a Bachelor’s at Yale University, he completed Master’s and
doctoral studies in philosophy at Harvard University. His thesis dealt with Dewey’s theory of
inquiry. He also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and pursued advanced study in music (Piano
and clarinet).

The Reflective Practitioner

This book reflective practitioner is considered as a seminal book, in which Shön formulated his
theory about reflective activity, knowing in action and reflection in action. Schön, through his
proposal of the reflective-practice concept, opposed design as rational problem solving
defended by Simon in his Sciences of the Artificial (Simon, 1969/1996). To Shön design is not
problem solving activity in the sense that Problem solving is generally considered as handling
problems as “given,” whereas the process of “problem setting” is neglected. Starting with
problems as “given,” matters of “choice or decision are solved through the selection, from
available means, of the one best suited to established ends. But with this emphasis on problem
solving, we ignore problem setting, the process by which we define the decision to be made,
the ends to be achieved, and the means that may be chosen.

So to him, every design task is unique, and that the basic problem for designers is to determine
how to approach such a single unique task. Schön places this tackling of unique tasks at the
centre of design practice, a notion he terms knowing-in-action:

In page 50 he says:

“Once we put aside the model of Technical Rationality which leads us to think of intelligent
practice as an application of knowledge to instrumental decisions, there is nothing strange
about the idea that a kind of knowing is inherent in intelligent action… it does not stretch
common sense very much to say that the know-how is in the action – that a tight-rope walker’s
know-how, for example, lies in and is revealed by, the way he takes his trip across the wire…
There is nothing in common sense to make us say that the know-how consists in rules or plans
which we entertain in the mind prior to action”.

Reflection-in-action is the reflective form of knowing-in-action: It is Schön’s assumption that

“competent practitioners usually know more than they can say” (Schön, 1983, p. 8): this
illustrates the classical, generally applicable difference between “knowing how” and “knowing
that”. Likewise the difference in German, “können” and “wissen”,”Knowing how”, and
“knowing what”.

So after introducing his key concept and background, I would like to summarise the chapter 3.

Chapter3: Design As a Reflective Conversation with the Situation

In the chapter 3, he uses protocol study as a method of investigation to articulate reflection in
action, from a case in architecture profession. He chooses architecture because it as an
established field of design, that he had the opportunity to observe and study.

At the beginning of the chapter, he briefly overviews the design field. -As a designer I noticed
he considers the product design under the heading of engineering.- I found, his observation,
even in 1983, about design was expanding to all sorts of fields, is quite interesting. It is still
valid. Design is expending to all sorts of fields, hence he recognises the risk of ignoring the
profession specific knowledge, goals, context and media that exist in these fields. But he also
says it might bring the opportunity to discover, a generic design process underlying these
processes. He mentions various perspectives and notions exist in Architecture, which underlie
their actions. He also notices that it might be confusing especially for students. He asks “How
should we regard the controversies among the contending schools? Should we take them as
competing definitions of the field, which entails very different concepts of professional
knowledge and practice ? or stylistic variations of a design process that is essentially the same
for all schools.

Through analysis of the protocol, Shön points out some keys aspects. Framing problem is one
of them. He claims that not being able to find a solution is resulted from “framing the
problem”. Designers, therefore, need frame and re-frame the problem. Each decision is a local
experiment that contributes to the reframing the problem. To answer his earlier question
regarding different styles of design schools, he states, in page 103,

“Designers might differ, for example with respect to the priorities they assign to design domains
at various stages of the process. They might focus less on the global geometry of buildings as
Quist does, than on the site or on the properties and potentials of materials. But whatever the
differences designers have, such as backgrounds, experiences and priorities, they are likely to
find themselves in a complex situation and a conversation with the situation”.

He also suggests, we would have observed better this conversation If Quist demonstrates less
virtuosity. He does not states the reason of his reflections. Therefore, Schön argues, we saw a
simple, direct and confident demonstration, and less iteration.

In rest of the book Schön investigates other professions and compares their thinking in action.

Conclusion:

In “reflection-in-action”, “doing and thinking are complementary. Doing extends thinking in the
tests, moves, and probes of experimental action, and reflection feeds on doing and its results.
Each feeds the other, and each sets boundaries for the other” (Schön, 1983, p. 280)
To finalise my summary, I will briefly mention some of reflections to this seminal work.

Criticism and influence

Nigel Cross (2011) finds Schön’s study, acute and sensitive and recognises as the most
influential study on designer at work, one reason he indicate veracity of the analysis
is recognisable both designers and design researchers. but he also notes that:

“What is surprising in that such an influential study is based on just one partial example of
design activity-and even that is not a “real” design example, but is taken from observing an
experienced designer tutoring a student in a university architeture studio.” p.23

Schon’s argument has widely influence education, health and social care. Fish and Coles
(1998), for instance, saw it is tool revise and improve the professional practice. Reflective
practice is widely adapted also critiqued by various disciplines, educators, health services.
Finally I read some criticism about Schön in Linda Finlay’s paper (2008) . The difficulty in
reflection is noted especially for busy professionals short on time. Also Applying reflective
practice is difficult without falling in bland, mechanical, unthinking ways.

It has also a dark side. reflection is psychologically explosive…[it] is like laying down charges of
psychological dynamite.

Some noticeable criticisms summarised by Finlay (2008) are:

Eraut (2004) faults the work for its lack of precision and clarity. Boud and Walker (1998) argue
that Schön’s analysis ignores critical features of the context of reflection. Usher et al (1997)
find Schön’s account and methodology unreflexive, while Smyth (1989) deplores the a
theoretical and apolitical quality of his conceptions. Greenwood (1993), meanwhile, targets
Schön for downplaying the importance of reflection-before-action. Moon (1999) regards
Schön’s pivotal concept of reflection-in-action as unachievable, while Ekebergh 2006 draws on
phenomenological philosophy to argue that it is not possible to distance oneself from the lived
situation to reflect in the moment. To achieve real self-reflection, she asserts, one needs to
step out of the situation and reflect retrospectively (van Manen, 1990).
 Unit-7

Process of Reflection

Reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's actions so as to engage in aprocess of continuous
learning. According to one definition it involves "paying critical attention to the practical values and
theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively.

What is reflecting?

Reflecting is the process of paraphrasing and restating both the feelings and words of the
speaker. The purposes of reflecting are:

 To allow the speaker to 'hear' their own thoughts and to focus on what they say and feel.
 To show the speaker that you are trying to perceive the world as they see it and that you are doing your
best to understand their messages.
 To encourage them to continue talking.
Reflecting does not involve you asking questions, introducing a new topic or leading the conversation in
another direction. Speakers are helped through reflecting as it not only allows them to feel understood,
but it also gives them the opportunity to focus their ideas. This in turn helps them to direct their
thoughts and further encourages them to continue speaking.

Getting Clear About Your Goals

You might choose to skim the surface while reflecting on these questions. Or you may want to go a little
deeper – asking yourself “why?” each time you come up with an answer to every question. The deeper
you go, the clearer your goals will become. Write them down and reflect on them periodically
throughout your time at University. You may be surprised at the extent to which your goals change,
evolve over time or remain unchanged. It’s all good – just tells you something about your own personal
approach to getting where you want to be.

Being a Successful Learner

Successful learners use a variety of strategies in the process of learning. Researchers in the fields of
education and psychology often refer to these strategies as metacognitive and cognitive. Metacognitive
strategies relate to planning and personal reflection – if you took some time to reflect on the previous
questions, you were using metacognitive strategies. Cognitive strategies relate to how you process
information and make it meaningful.

Reflecting on Reflections: Preparing to give feedback

One of the best forms of feedback to offer in any instructional consulting situation is simple observation.
Drawing directly from double-entry notes can help consultants prepare feedback in this way. However,
other kinds of experiences may benefit from other forms of feedback that require further reflection
upon the notes as well as the memories of an experience. The following are several strategies, drawn
from ethnographic methods of field research, for how to reflect upon initial reflections.
Therefore, as an extension of good listening skills, you need to develop the ability to reflect words and
feelings and to clarify that you have understood them correctly. It is often important that you and the
speaker agree that what you understand is a true representation of what was meant to be said.

Two Main Techniques of Reflecting:

Mirroring

Mirroring is a simple form of reflecting and involves repeating almost exactly what the speaker says.

Mirroring should be short and simple. It is usually enough to just repeat key words or the last few words
spoken. This shows you are trying to understand the speakers terms of reference and acts as a prompt
for him or her to continue. Be aware not to over mirror as this can become irritating and therefore a
distraction from the message.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing involves using other words to reflect what the speaker has said. Paraphrasing shows not
only that you are listening, but that you are attempting to understand what the speaker is saying.

It is often the case that people 'hear what they expect to hear' due to assumptions, stereotyping or
prejudices. When paraphrasing, it is of utmost importance that you do not introduce your own ideas or
question the speakers thoughts, feelings or actions. Your responses should be non-directive and non-
judgemental.

It is very difficult to resist the temptation to ask questions and when this technique is first used,
reflecting can seem very stilted and unnatural. You need to practice this skill in order to feel
comfortable.

Skills for Reflection

Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process.

Listening is key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are
easily misunderstood. As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily
become frustrated or irritated.
If there is one communication skill you should aim to master, then listening is it.

Listening is so important that many top employers provide listening skills training for their employees.
This is not surprising when you consider that good listening skills can lead to better customer
satisfaction, greater productivity with fewer mistakes, and increased sharing of information that in
turn can lead to more creative and innovative work.

Reflection strategies for classroom activities

(Compiled by Professor Diane Sloan, Miami Dade College, and based on the work of Julie Hatcher and
Robert Bringle's "Reflection Activities for the College Classroom": Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis )

It is clear that the power in learning is in the action of doing the activity. Reflection provides the same
power through the action of articulating thoughts. Reflection is the necessary bridge in the learning
process that takes place when a student is involved in a service-learning experience. There are the
traditional strategies such as writing in journals, reporting orally in front of the class, or writing an essay
describing the experience. The following examples will include and also move ahead of the tried and
true, giving the facilitator a variety of other methods that he/she might like to incorporate in the
classroom.

1. Personal Journals
2. Dialogue Journals
3.Highlighted Journals
4.Key Phrase Journals
5.Double-entry Journals
6.Critical Incident Journals
7.Three-part Journals
8.Free Association Brainstorming
9.Quotes
10.Quotes in Songs
11.Reflective Essays
12.Directed Writings
13.Experiential Research Paper
14.Service-Learning Contracts and Logs
15.Directed Readings
16.Ethical Case Studies
17.Class Discussion
18. Truth is Stranger than Fiction
19. Student Portfolios
20. It's My Bag
21. It's Your Thing/Express Yourself
22. Small Group Week
23. Email Discussion Groups
24. Class Presentations

( A note about reflection journals: a common tendency is for journal entries to become a mere log of
events rather than a reflective activity in which students consider the service experience in the context
of learning objectives. Guidance is needed to help students link personal learning with course content.)

1. Personal Journal - Students will write freely about their experience. This is usually done weekly. These
personal journals may be submitted periodically to the instructor, or kept as a reference to use at the
end of the experience when putting together an academic essay reflecting their experience. (Hatcher
1996)

2. Dialogue Journal - Students submit loose-leaf pages from a dialogue journal bi-weekly (or otherwise
at appropriate intervals) for the instructor to read and comment on. While labor intensive for the
instructor, this can provide continual feedback to students and prompt new questions for students to
consider during the semester. (Goldsmith, 1995)

3. Highlighted Journal - Before students submit the reflective journal, they reread personal entries and,
using a highlighter, mark sections of the journal that directly relate to concepts discussed in the text or
in class. This makes it easier for the instructor to identify the student to reflect on their experience in
light of course content. (Gary Hesser, AugsbergCollege )

4. Key Phrase Journal - In this type of journal, students are asked to integrate terms and key phrases
within their journal entries. The instructor can provide a list of terms at the beginning of the semester or
for a certain portion of the text. Students could also create their own list of key phrases to include.
Journal entries are written within the framework of the course content and become an observation of
how course content is evident in the service experience. (Hatcher 1996)

5. Double-entry Journal - When using a double-entry journal, students are asked to write one-page
entries each week: Students describe their personal thoughts and reactions to the service experience on
the left page of the journal, and write about key issues from class discussions or readings on the right
page of the journal. Students then draw arrows indicating relationships between their personal
experiences and course content. This type of journal is a compilation of personal data and a summary of
course content in preparation of a more formal reflection paper at the end of the semester. (Angelo and
Cross 1993)

6. Critical Incident Journal - This type of journal entry focuses the student on analysis of a particular
event that occurred during the week. By answering one of the following sets of prompts, students are
asked to consider their thoughts and reactions and articulate the action they plan to take in the future:
Describe a significant event that occurred as a part of the service-learning experience. Why was this
significant to you? What underlying issues (societal, interpersonal) surfaced as a result of this
experience? How will this incident influence your future behavior? Another set of questions for a critical
incident journal includes the following prompts: Describe an incident or situation that created a
dilemma for you in terms of what to say or do. What is the first thing you thought of to say or do? List
three other actions you might have taken. Which of the above seems best to you now and why do you
think this is the best response? (Hatcher 1996)

7. Three-part Journal - Students are asked to divide each page of their journal into thirds, and write
weekly entries during the semester. In the top section, students describe some aspect of the service
experience. In the middle of the page, they are asked to analyze how course content relates to the
service experience. And finally, an application section prompts students to comment on how the
experience and course content can be applied to their personal or professional life. (Bringle 1996)

8. Free Association Brainstorming - (This reflection session should take place no earlier than the end of
the first 1/3 of the project experience.) Give each student 10-20 "postits" and ask them to write down all
the feelings they had when they first heard about their service-learning requirement. After they finish
the first question, have them write down all of the feelings they had when they experienced their first
"field encounter." After finishing question two completely, have them write down all of the feelings they
are having "right now" regarding their service-learning experience. Encourage them to write down as
many different brainstormed thoughts as possible (one for each card). Have three newsprint papers
strategically located and taped to the walls around the classroom. Have one with a large happy face, one
with a sad face, and one with a bewildered face. Ask students to now place their words on the newsprint
paper that closest fits their brainstormed feelings. Then have them stand next to the newsprint that has
most of their feelings. This exercise involves both writing and speaking and is seen as non-threatening in
an oral presentation sense. (Sloan 1996)

Unit-8

8.1 Systematic Reflection through the course work.

Systematic Reflection: Concept and. Process. Systematic reflection is a learning procedure during which
learners comprehensively analyze their behavior and evaluate the contribution of its components to
performance outcomes.

Possible Technologies to Support the Approach

There are many different technologies that can be used to support reflective learning, and, as the
process is extremely important in this approach, it is likely that individuals will have strong preferences
for particular tools.

Audio and Video are extremely useful for capturing ‘in the moment’ reflections, such as thoughts
prompted during a learning activity or teaching session. Many students already own a device that can be
used to record these reflections, such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop. The students could simply keep
these recordings on their devices or upload them to an online system for integration with
other reflections and artefacts.
Mind maps provide a method for students to think about their learning and make connections between
different aspects of their learning. Electronic mind maps have the benefit over paper-based ones that it
is relatively straightforward to attach other resources to items in the diagram, such as examples of work,
multimedia files or even other mind maps. This means that the diagram can be used as a way to explore
a large body of reflections in a variety of formats.
Blogs, Google Sites and Wikis offer mechanisms for storing and sharing written reflections, possibly
supplemented with audio and video. Each of these tools has its own particular strengths and
weaknesses and the one that is most appropriate for a given situation will depend on the needs and
abilities of the students. These tools also offer a level of collaboration that is useful in situations where
group reflection is desirable.
ePortfolios, particularly those such as PebblePad that place a specific emphasis on reflection, are a good
way to collate pieces of work and reflections into a cohesive whole. Drawing together these resources in
a single place makes it easier to take a holistic view of learning and development and see progression.
Audio and video reflections can be stored in the ePortfolio and used to support written reflections.
These types of tools often have built-in ways to promote and support structured reflection that can
enhance the benefit of the process and encourage deeper learning.

Q. Identify Key questions for their own role as novice teachers.

Many variations exist in the terminology used throughout the teacher education literature.
The following are definitions used throughout this study.
Preservice Teacher (PST).An individual enrolled in a teacher preparation program that
has not yet satisfied all program requirements and does not retain a Professional Educator’s
Certificate (CAEP, 2013). Preservice teachers specifically selected for this study had inquiry
experience during their preservice teacher certification, as a result of having engaged in teacher
inquiry for a total of three consecutive semesters.
Novice Teacher/Program Completer.An individual in their first year in the classroom
that has satisfied all requirements in a teacher preparation program and retains a K-6 Professional
Educator’s Certificate. Teacher preparation programs are held accountable by the Council of
Accreditation for Educator Preparation (CAEP, 2013) to produce evidence of their program
completers’ impact on student learning for their first two years in the classroom. Participants in
this study fulfilled all specified requirements under this definition.
13
Problems of Practice.Challenges experienced by the novice teacher/program completer
in their first year in the classroom. Teachers evolve in their focus of problems from thinking
about self, to their teaching tasks, only eventually considering their impact on student learning as
they gain expertise (Fuller &Bown, 1975). This study lent attention to the problems of practice
identified by novice teachers and their approach to resolving them, as described in their stories.
Teacher Inquiry.An intentional and systematic study used by teachers to generate
personally meaningful knowledge to solve problems of practice (Carr &Kemmis, 1986;
Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990; Stenhouse, 1975). The systematic process includes: identifying a
classroom problem of practice; reading literature to inform it; planning an investigation;
collecting and analyzing data; and using the data to reflect, propose an explanation and improve
a teaching practice. Findings can then be shared publicly with other teachers and/or
professionals to inform the transformation of others’ practices

Impact on Student Learning.A program completers’ demonstration of “competencies

and skills necessary to achieve the state education goals; help all students in the state’s diverse
student population meet high standards for academic achievement; maintain safe, secure
classroom learning environments; and sustain the state system of school improvement and
education accountability” (FLDOE, 2015, p. 1). Teachers’ impact on student learning is
assessed by the state based on P-12 student growth. Preparation programs will need to provide
evidence of the quality of novice teachers per these expectations throughout the first two years
after completion of their program, thus supporting this study’s rationale that they must begin to
study the effects of their pedagogical practices in teacher preparation, on the skills and
competencies of the novice teachers produced. Further, it responds to CAEP’s call that “research
to date does not tell us what specific experiences are most likely to result in more effective
beginning teachers” (CAEP, 2013, p. 8).
Stakeholder.An individual invested in supporting students in a school context,
including administrators, teachers, staff, and parents (Day, 1999).
Teacher Researcher.An individual actively engaged in using the systematic process of
teacher inquiry to study and improve their teaching practice.
Signature Pedagogy (SP).Shulman’s, (2005) concept of intentionally designed teaching
routines that facilitate preservice teacher learning. Shulman’s (2005) routines result in:
developing preservice teachers’ professional character, acknowledging that teachers must learn
to make decisions under immediate and uncertain circumstances, and expecting preservice
teachers to interact, collaborate and reflect with students, peers and other educators. Inquiry,
referenced as teacher inquiry throughout this dissertation, is the signature pedagogy that led to
15
this study’s investigation of the problems of practice novice teachers identify and the ways in
which they approach resolving them.
Inquiry Intention.Analyzing “field texts in the context of other research and theoretical
frameworks,” to seek “patterns, narrative threads, tensions, and themes” that provide insight into
research questions in a narrative inquiry (Clandinin& Connelly, 2000, p. 133).
Skills of Inquiry.Skills of teacher inquiry consist of an individual’s ability to identify
problems within their practice, ask questions to investigate the identified problems,
systematically collect and analyze data to make sense of it and drive change in action (Smith,
2012). Participants’ narratives were analyzed for the use of any of these skills when solving
problems of practice.
Dispositions of Inquiry.Dispositions are habits that dictate the precise ways
individuals’ respond to situations given a particular context. A disposition can show itself via a
“set of interrelated habits” (Nelsen, 2015, p. 89). Dispositions of inquiry in this study are
derived from the literature as reflection, critical learning, and emotional intelligence (Day, 1999;
Deal & White, 2009; Schön, 1983; 1987; Smith, 2004; Smith, 2012). Participants’ narratives in
this study were analyzed for these characteristics.
Reflective Disposition.A “conscious” mindset, whereby practitioners ask themselves
“What is this?” and “How have I been thinking about it?” therefore, questioning their beliefs
and/or practices to better understand problems at hand (Schön, 1987, pp. 28-29). In this study
novices’ reflection is analyzed for depth per Handal and Lauvas (1987), with ‘action’ guiding
reflection as the primary level, theoretical reasons on the second level of reflection, and
moral/ethical considerations as the third and deepest level of reflection.

8.3 Understand the issues in becoming a reflective practitioner

 Learning to teach: becoming a reflective practitioner

Introduction
How often do you find yourself replaying in your head the events of the day or an incident in your life?
Whether it is going through a conversation that happened to digest what has been said, thinking about
sequences of events that led to a certain conclusion, or thinking about how you felt or reacted at a point
in time. At this level, we are quite used to the idea of reflecting on our own actions.
Reflective practice is a term strongly associated with learning in professional contexts such as teaching,
nursing or social work and can be thought of in a number of ways. It can be described as a learning tool,
something that is going to help you to synthesise, explain, make sense of and ultimately develop
meaning from, your experiences.
It can be considered to be a professional competence, as reflected in the standards you are expected to
achieve by the end of your Initial Teacher Education (ITE) course. Finally, it might be thought of as a type
of dialogue or prose, a particular type of conversation or a writing style that captures your personal
views and relates them to evidence you have collected from elsewhere.
Before considering the nature of reflection and the theoretical ideas that underpin it, it is worth
considering why reflective practice is considered so important both within ITE and within career long
learning in education.
Reflection point: Think of a situation where, through reflecting on what has happened, you have acted
differently or changed your initial view of a situation.
This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student
teachers.
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OpenLearn by filling out this short survey.
Learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
 understand the role of reflective practice in ITE (Initial Teacher Education)
 recognise some models of reflective practice
 identify the difference between reflection, analysis and description
 understand the difficulties in ensuring that reflection leads to learning and begin to develop some
strategies to ensure reflection supports development.
1 Difficulties with learning to teach
Learning from your experience in schools is central to your ITE and your subsequent professional
development. During your course, your school placements will develop your practical skills and
knowledge and provide you with opportunities to demonstrate your learning. Time in school is likely to
make up the vast majority of your course time so how do you make sure you are learning effectively
while you are there? To help you understand how to learn effectively, it is worthwhile considering some
of the complexities of workplace learning in order to frame our discussion of how reflective practice can
support you.
 1.1 Complexities of workplace learning
Working in any specific educational context is likely to highlight differences of opinion. These may be the
result of differences between:
 members of staff about what strategies they employ or the beliefs they hold
 the pedagogy of different teachers and the pedagogy promoted by your ITE course leaders
 ideas you have read about in journals or books and what you see happening in the school
 your own beliefs, views and assumptions and those of other people.
These differences in perspectives are a normal occurrence in school-based workplace learning. How you
deal with these situations is important. They can be the stimulus for learning if you ask questions such
as:
 Why have these differences occurred?
 Is it to do with the personalities involved and their beliefs and values?
 Is it due to the particular context in which the contradictions have occurred?
 Have they arisen because of your own assumptions, beliefs and values?
ITE requires you to synthesise these perspectives, make links between them and make informed,
reasoned decisions about what to take forward into your own practice and what not to.
Experiencing differences in perspective, whether between members of staff or between practice and
literature, can have an emotional impact. You might experience moments during your course where you
feel confused and frustrated by seemingly contradictory advice or information. You may feel tempted to
dismiss information to reduce the complexity. However, viewing these differences in perspective as an
opportunity to learn enables you to turn them into a positive experience. This may include discussing
the issue with your mentor or tutor, reading around the issues to get a broader frame of reference or
asking more people for their opinions to test out your thinking.
1.2 Professional judgement and practice wisdom
You may hear the terms ‘professional judgement’ and ‘practice wisdom’ used during your ITE course,
particularly if you ask a teacher why they made a particular decision about how to teach. Sometimes, it
is difficult for an experienced teacher to unpack what lies behind their decision-making processes
(Hobson, 2002, Jones and Straker, 2006). What often lies behind professional judgements or practice
wisdom is years of experimenting with different approaches, incorporating different ideas from
research, theory and practice, and constant critical reflection.
Activity 1: Practice wisdom, theory and experience
Time: 20 minutes

There is a triangular relationship between practice wisdom, theory and experience, see Figure 1
(Lunenberg and Korthagen, 2009).
Figure 1 Triangular relationship between practice wisdom, theory and experience

Long description

Listen to ‘What’s in a name: mentoring and tutoring explained’ focusing specifically on the dialogue by
Hannah Watson (mentor) and Dave Smith (tutor), about the difference between the two roles. (Please
note that The Open University’s PGCE course mentioned in this audio has now been discontinued.)
Show transcript

Download

Audio 1

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

How does the discussion relate to Lunenberg and Korthagen’s diagram?

Discussion
Hannah clearly identifies the immediate, context specific nature of her role. She acknowledges the
importance of being a good role model, yet being open and flexible enough to accept different opinions
on practice. Although it is not explicitly stated, it is plausible that these different opinions and ideas may
have come from previous experiences of teaching, personal experiences of teaching the classes at that
school, and ideas from theory or literature.
Dave’s comments reveal that he believes it is his role to ensure that practice wisdom, theory and
experience are brought together, considered and discussed with the student. He outlines his role as
being one that ‘opens out’ the debate to beyond the immediate context. He explicitly mentions making
links between theory and experience as a way of doing this.
Learning to teach is about working with these complexities, learning from them and successfully
transferring your learning to new contexts. Reflective practice is one way to ensure this happens and we
will now go on to think about what reflective practice involves.
2 What is critical reflection?
Critical analysis and reflection is a key tool in helping us learn from the contradictions and complexities
we encounter.
Activity 2: Importance of critical reflection
Listen to the clip of Dave and Sarah explaining what is meant by critical reflection and the importance of
critical reflection in learning to teach. (Please note that The Open University’s PGCE course mentioned in
this audio has now been discontinued.)
Show transcript

Download

Audio 2

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Discussion
Both Dave and Sarah emphasise the importance of being able to analyse lessons and basing that analysis
on the evidence available.
Critical reflection allows us to synthesise different perspectives (whether from other people or
literature) to help explain, justify or challenge what we have encountered in our own or other people’s
practice. It may be that theory or literature gives us an alternative perspective that we should consider,
it may provide evidence to support our views or practices or it may explicitly challenge them.
Critical reflection also allows us to analyse what we have learned and how we have learned to enable us
to take control of our own development. It is in light of these two functions that a great deal of
importance is placed on critical reflection in the professional development of teachers.
The rest of this course will help you to understand critical reflection and introduce some tools to support
effective reflection.
2.1 Defining reflective practice
The term ‘reflective practice’ derives from the work of Dewey and Schon. Dewey (1910, p.6) wrote that
reflective practice refers to ‘the active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed
form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it’. This means that you will have a
questioning approach; you will consider why things are as they are, and how they might be.
Dewey went on to say that being reflective ‘enables us to direct our actions with foresight … It enables
us to know what we are about when we act’. This is extremely important in teaching. What you do in
the classroom and how you behave should have been carefully planned, informed by theory and
experience and be purposeful.
Schon (1983) presents a slightly different view. He regards reflection as having two aspects: reflection-
in-action and reflection-on-action.
Reflection-in-action refers to the quick thinking and reaction that occur as you are doing, for example in
the classroom you may be teaching a topic which you can see the pupils are not understanding. Your
reflection-in-action allows you to see this, consider why it is happening, and respond by doing it
 differently. This could involve reframing your explanation or approaching the topic from a different
perspective.
Reflection-on-action is what occurs outside the classroom when you consider the situation again. You
may think more deeply about why the pupils did not understand, what caused the situation, what
options were open to you, why you chose one option and not another. Your responses will depend on
your existing level of knowledge and experience, your understanding of theories and your values.
Activity 3: Reflecting
Time: 20 minutes

Using what you have read so far, list five factors that might affect your ability to reflect-in-action and
five factors that might affect how you reflect-on-action.
Discussion
Reflection-in-action may be influenced by factors such as: your emotional reaction to the situation as it
happens, your previous experience of similar situations, the interactions you have with certain
individuals at the time and what strategies you have to deal with the situation.
Reflection-on-action may also be influenced by your emotional reaction albeit after the incident,
discussions you have or other people’s comments about the situation, the consequences of the events
or your involvement with the individuals involved in the incident after the event.
Dewey and Schon’s ideas are manifest into a number of commonly used terms including reflection,
reflective practice, critical reflection, critical analysis and critical thinking. In ITE you may be asked to
produce evidence of some or all of these in conversations, written assessments or school
documentation such as lesson evaluations. The following sections will explore some of these and help
you understand what they mean.
3 What is critical analysis?
Critical analysis involves analysis and critical thinking.
Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of
it. An example of this would be exploring the reasons behind a pupil not understanding a concept. An
unanalytical approach might just say that they weren’t ready to understand the concepts being taught.
A more critically analytical approach might break down the issue into a number of factors that might
have influenced the pupil’s inability to understand. These might include:
 the pupil’s previous learning and understanding
 the way the concept was presented
 the context of the lesson (time of day, previous lesson, the pupil’s mood)
 the way the teacher assessed the pupil’s understanding.
Critical thinking is essentially a sceptical or questioning approach to knowledge. Someone who is
thinking critically will question assumptions and think about issues from a variety of perspectives. It
involves looking at ideas and information from a detached position, trying to set aside personal values
and opinions, and looking for evidence to bring to bear on the issue under scrutiny. This might involve
asking:
 Why was it taught that way?
 What theoretical principles promote or challenge the way it was taught?
 Are there alternative views or methods?
Critical analysis and thinking is not the same as criticism of someone or what they do, which is made
from a personal, judgemental position. This is important to bear in mind during your school placements,
particularly if you find yourself in a situation where you have a difference of opinion with your mentor
or school coordinator.
4 Features of reflection
As we have discussed already, teaching is a complex activity, in which decisions are made in complex
contexts. In addition, there are theoretical perspectives to consider, and the process of reflection brings
all these aspects together.
Reflective practice is widely considered to be an important activity for professional development. There
is a huge amount of literature exploring and debating reflection and reflective practice in education.
There are some key features of reflection that are widely accepted:
1. Reflection results in learning – through changing ideas and your understanding of the situation
2. Reflection is an active process of learning and is more than thinking or thoughtful action
3. Reflection involves problematising teaching by recognising that practice is not without dilemmas
and issues
4. Reflection is not a linear process, but a cyclical one where reflection leads to the development of
new ideas which are then used to plan the next stages of learning
5. Reflection encourages looking at issues from different perspectives, which helps you to
understand the issue and scrutinise your own values, assumptions and perspective.
Therefore, when the term ‘critical reflection’ is used, it refers to a combination of the analytical,
questioning (or critical thinking) and reflective approaches. It is this combination that would characterise
a critically reflective conversation.
4.1 Critical reflection in reading and writing
As part of your ITE course you may be asked to produce written work which demonstrates critical
reflection.
Reading for critical analysis and reflection involves:
 Making judgements about the way arguments are made in the text.
o Are they convincing?
o Are they based on reliable evidence?
Considering the arguments from a detached position which allows you to carefully scrutinise what is
being said.
o What is missing or doesn’t relate to my understanding of the issues?
Reading to understand different ways of thinking about a subject rather than just collecting
information or quotes.
Considering how the literature relates to your own practical experiences.
o Does it support, challenge or even undermine your experiences?
Writing in a critically reflective and analytical style involves applying these ideas to help you develop
arguments, use evidence and demonstrate the link between theoretical perspectives and experiences in
practice. The following activity will help you to understand what is meant by critically reflective writing.
Activity 4: Identifying critical reflection
Time: 30 minutes

1. Read the extracts from the lesson evaluations of two student teachers who team taught the same
lesson, Lesson analysis.
2. Using different colours, highlight what is descriptive, what is analytical and what is reflective.
3. Come to a conclusion about whether each student teacher has been critically reflective.
Discussion
You may have found it difficult to mark places where the authors are being critically reflective as this is
inevitably intertwined with the other three types of writing. It is how description, reflection and analysis
are used that will determine whether the writing as a whole is critically reflective. For example, passages
which analyse theory or practice may use description or reflection to support a particular view or may
be used to demonstrate where there is an alternative view to consider.
Both texts can be described as being critically reflective, although they employ different styles. There
are elements of description and reflection but these are usually used as evidence to support critically
reflective statements or arguments. The interweaving of theory, practice and reflection gives weight to
the arguments the author is presenting, with very few statements that are based solely on personal
opinion or experience. The use of questions can be helpful as a starting point for a discussion with the
student teacher’s tutor or mentor.
Having considered what critical reflection is, we will now think about how to ensure reflection leads to
effective learning.
5 Reflecting effectively
In a busy school placement you may find that you concentrate on immediate reactions, big issues or
surface level responses to situations. This is a common experience, and well established in the research
literature as Finlay notes in her paper ‘Reflecting on reflective practice’.
Busy, over-stretched professionals are likely to find reflective practice taxing and difficult. Bland,
mechanical, routinised and unthinking ways of doing reflective practice are too often the result.
(Finlay, 2008)

Other authors have expressed concern about the concept of reflective practice and have challenged
concepts such as Schon’s ‘reflection-in-action’. For example Ixer, writing about reflection in social work
practice, argues that ‘reflection-in-action’ cannot be applied to those working in professionally
demanding situations in the same way as it can be to other professions. He suggest that in these
situations:
Practitioners are seen as applying knowledge built up from their own experience which is ‘tacit’ and
therefore difficult to access and discuss. Reflection aims to develop conscious control of knowledge in
such circumstances, through a process of metacognition, so that professionals are able to self-analyse
and learn to operate more effectively in demanding situations. In essence, this means that they develop
transferable skills which are lifelong and not context-specific.
 (Ixer, 1999)

This quote contains important messages about effective reflective practice that are worth unpicking.
Firstly, Ixer’s use of the phrase ‘tacit knowledge’ acknowledges that at times you will be acting in an
unconscious, routinised way. This links with the discussion about practice wisdom, and how established
teachers can find it difficult to express their thought processes or how they learned a particular strategy.
Secondly, Ixer mentions metacognition, which is commonly defined as thinking about thinking. The idea
of developing pupil’s metacognition is increasingly being discussed in educational literature with a view
to helping pupils take conscious control of their own learning. However, there is also increasing
evidence that teachers need to develop their metacognitive awareness to increase their own
professional learning and to enable them to support pupils develop their metacognitive skills effectively
(Veenman et al., 2006, Kuhn, 2000, Kistner, 2010). Being metacognitively aware as a teacher, involves
understanding how your thinking (and therefore learning) is developing.
Finally, Ixer highlights how, through metacognition, and conscious control of your thinking and learning,
you will be more equipped to transfer your learning between different contexts and situations. This is a
critical point as you move between different school contexts and develop career long learning habits to
ensure you are able to adapt your practice to new ideas in education.
5.1 Ensuring reflection leads to learning
So, how can we ensure that reflective practice leads to learning? Both Finlay and Ixer’s criticisms of
reflective practice hint at a distinction between surface level reflection (routinised, bland and
unthinking) and a deeper level (conscious control, self-analysis, metacognition). As stated by Cartwright
(2011), LaBoskey takes this idea further by making a distinction between ‘common sense thinkers’ and
those who are ‘pedagogical thinkers’. This distinction gets to the heart of how to ensure reflection is an
effective learning tool.
LaBoskey defines ‘common sense thinkers’ as those who reflect in an unconscious way, suggesting they
are happy to use a ‘trial and error’ approach to learning to address short-term issues that are context
specific.
‘Pedagogical thinkers’ are more conscious of their actions asking the questions ‘What is my intuitive
response to this, and why am I feeling or acting this way?’ (Laboskey in Cartwright, 2011).Labosky
suggests that it is by taking conscious control, that pedagogical thinkers ‘take a long term view of how to
solve problems… remain open to learning… recognise there are no simple answers and the conclusions
they reach are likely to be tentative’ (Laboskey in Cartwright, 2011).
6 Tools for reflection
In your ITE course you may be asked to demonstrate your ability to critically reflect in a number of ways.
Some commonly used tools include:
 learning journals (via blogs or off-line formats)
 webfolios
 written assessment tasks at designated points in the ITE course
 lesson evaluations
 tutorials or meetings with your mentor or tutor.
Whatever the format, these tools provide an opportunity to demonstrate deep level reflection, but are
all susceptible to the kind of surface level reflection that Ixer, Finlay and Laboskey warn against.
So how can you evaluate whether you are using these tools effectively? One answer is to develop an
understanding of some models of reflection, which will help you shape your responses and guide you as
to what you may be missing out. The next section will introduce you to a few models.
6.1 Models of reflection
There are many different models of reflection as a quick search online will prove. Using models, or at
least being aware of their similarities and differences, can help you to deconstruct experiences, ensure
you are accessing the deeper level reflective questions and issues, and ultimately provide a way to
structure your learning from situations.

Boud’s triangular representation

Many models are cyclical in nature, representing the idea that reflection leads to learning, but this
learning is never completed or able to be transferred without reflecting on it further in different
contexts. The most simple model could be seen to be Boud’s triangular representation, Figure 2.

Figure 2 Boud’s triangular representation

Long description

This model, although capturing the essentials (that experience and reflection lead to learning), has
limitations. It doesn’t guide us as to what reflection might consist of, or how the learning might translate
back into experience. Aligning key reflective questions to this model, see Figure 3, may help.
Figure 3 What does reflection consist of?

Long description

6.2 Gibb’s reflective cycle

Alternatively, other theorists have broken down the cycle into further stages, an example of which is
Gibb’s reflective cycle, see Figure 4.
View larger image

Figure 4 Gibb’s reflective cycle (Adapted from Dye, 2011)

Long description

Gibb’s model acknowledges that your personal feelings influence the situation and how you have begun
to reflect on it. It builds on Boud’s model by breaking down reflection into evaluation of the events and
analysis and there is a clear link between the learning that has happened from the experience and
future practice.
However, despite the further break down, it can be argued that this model could still result in fairly
superficial reflection as it doesn’t refer to critical thinking / analysis or reflection. It doesn’t take into
consideration assumptions that you may hold about the experience, the need to look objectively at
different perspectives, and there doesn’t seem to be an explicit suggestion that the learning will result in
a change of assumptions, perspectives or practice. You could legitimately respond to the question ‘What
would you do next time?’ by answering that you would do the same, but does that constitute deep level
reflection?
6.3 Atkins and Murphy model
Atkins and Murphy (1993) address many of these criticisms with their own cyclical model, see Figure 5.

View larger image

Figure 5 Atkins and Murphy model

Long description
 Murphy and Atkins’ model can be seen to explicitly support the kind of deeper level reflection that was
discussed earlier in this course. This is not to say that the other models aren’t useful, far from it, but that
it is important to remain alert to the potential to provide superficial responses as the critical,
questioning and challenging elements of critical reflection are not as explicit.
Activity 5: Lesson analysis
Time: 30 minutes

Open the document Lesson analysis that you used in the previous activity and then re-read the notes
made by the students.
1. Analyse the notes in terms of Figure 4 and Figure 5 (Gibb’s model and Atkins and Murphy’s
model). What strikes you about the level of reflection of two responses?
2. What learning is evident in the two responses?
3. What aspects of the models you have looked at are evident from each of the responses? Which
are missing?
Discussion
Both students are reflective in their evaluations. However, in the second account, the student is
exploring possible explanations for the issues that have arisen. The actions that this student decides to
take are likely to lead to a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the issues that arose during the
lesson. The model described in Figure 5 is probably slightly more helpful in this respect.
It is also worth highlighting that a written evaluation is invaluable in terms of helping the students to
remember what happened at a time when they will be being bombarded with new experiences.
7 Transformational learning
Mezirow (2000) argues that reflection only leads to learning if it leads to transformation. Merizow
suggests that transformation occurs where the original starting point causes a dilemma that needs to be
addressed, and then suggests that there are a series of possible phases which may be gone through.
 A disorienting dilemma – loss of job, divorce, marriage, back to school, or moving to a new culture
 Self-examination with feelings of fear, anger, guilt, or shame
 A critical assessment of assumptions
 Recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared
 Exploration of options for new roles, relationships and actions
 Planning a course of action
 Acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans
 Provisional testing of new roles
 Building competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships
 A reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s new perspective.
(Adapted from Mezirow, 2000, p. 22)
What is particularly striking about Merizow’s ideas is the emphasis on conscious, self-managed learning.
The learning is not a direct result of the experience, it happens because the individual takes charge of
their critical reflection and explicitly plans and carries out steps to learn from it. This level of personal
responsibility for learning is crucial during ITE.
Reflection point: Think of a scenario where a lesson you teach goes very badly. How would Merizow’s
model help you ensure you learnt effectively from the situation?
8 The next step
Reflective practice is not only the domain of ITE, but of career long learning. Being an effective teacher
requires you to continue learning throughout your career to adapt to the latest subject requirements,
changes in pedagogy or responding to a new educational initiative. Therefore it is important to see
developing your understanding of critical reflection, and your reflective practice as establishing learning
habits that will support you well beyond the first year of teaching.
As discussed by MacGregor and Cartwright (2010), deep and extended reflection begins to develop into
‘Reflexivity’.
Bordieu and Wacquant (1992), Lawson (1985) and Steier (1991) have derived the meaning of reflexivity
from its Latin definition, ‘to turn back on oneself’. Thus, to be reflexive means to think about one’s own
concepts, values and what they bring to any situation.
(MacGregor and Cartwright, 2010, p. 240)

They go on to argue that reflexivity is about self-awareness and how we, as teachers, impact on
situations and our pupils. This can in turn lead to experimentation, developing research questions that
the teacher wants to explore further and ultimately can lead to them becoming classroom researchers,
which is discussed in An introduction to classroom research.